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Merkel’s Power Shaken by Refugee Crisis

January 21, 2016

German
Chancellor Angela Merkel, Time magazine’s “person of the year” in 2015,
is facing her biggest political crisis as her welcoming of Mideast
refugees has troubled and angered many Europeans, raising the
possibility that Merkel’s days as the Continent’s undisputed leader may
be numbered, writes Gilbert Doctorow.By Gilbert DoctorowThe
online edition of Bloomberg News carried a lead story entitled “Merkel
in Peril with Window to Tame EU’s Refugee Crisis.” It was a commendable
effort to flag the possibility of political change at the top of
Europe’s leading country, a prospect that most mainstream U.S. and even
European media still overlook.In the article on Thursday, the
writers took into account the direct challenge to Merkel’s open borders’
policy on refugees coming from the Christian Social Union (CSU), the
Bavarian sister party of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
Bavarian Premier Horst Seehofer disparaged Merkel’s failure to make the
slightest concession to her detractors when she spoke to a CSU gathering
in Wildbad Kreuth on Wednesday. He concluded, “We’re looking at some
difficult weeks and months ahead.”

President Barack Obama at a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on June 19, 2013.

Bloomberg
News also directed attention toward what it called “unprecedented
pressure” from within Merkel’s own faction, making reference to a letter
signed by 50 CDU deputies calling for the government to tighten border
security to counter the refugee influx. Previously, 56 deputies had made
known their disapproval, bringing the number in her faction opposed to
her refugee policy to one-third.Yet, in the end, the article’s
authors do not believe Merkel’s hold on power is genuinely imperiled, as
the title tantalizingly suggests, because she has weathered other
storms in her long tenure, because she has seen to it that there is no
successor in line to take over should her colleagues in the party wish
to dump her, and because the German economy is humming along, with
enviably low unemployment and GDP continuing to grow.The notion
of Merkel facing a “closing window” of opportunity to solve the refugee
crisis is presented by the authors as coming from the Dutch premier and
other neighboring countries, and without reference to dynamics inside
German politics.Worse Than It LooksWhile
the argument in favor of the German Chancellor remaining in her post is
credible, it is not persuasive and in what follows I intend to raise
several factors that the Bloomberg News team ignored.These
suggest that Merkel has finally laid the groundwork for her own
political demise by uncharacteristic impulsiveness, by the failure of
her intuitive faculties, and by her trademark stubbornness and doubling
down in the face of opposition.My reading of the German press, by which I mean leading dailies Frankfurter Allgemeine, Sùddeutsche Zeitung and Bild,
over the last week turns up what I would call a step-by-step
preparation of the German public for regime change. This is seen firstly
in the derogatory adjectives being attached to Merkel and her refugee
policy, including “brainless” (kopflos) and “idealistic.”To
be sure, “idealistic” would normally ring positive, but when applied to
the Iron Chancellor it takes on an unequivocally negative connotation
given her reputation among professionals for cynically manipulating the
political levers to gain and keep power and her reliance on polls rather
than “grand ideas” or even principles to guide her policy-making. I
call her decision to welcome and embrace the flood of Syrian, Iraqi and
other Middle Eastern refugees impulsive given its immediate context.The
summer of 2015 was a public relations disaster for Merkel, as viewed
from many European countries. She was widely seen as the European leader
calling the shots on what was undeniably the rape of Greece, a
power play in which the Troika of European Commission, European Central
Bank and International Monetary Fund steamrolled the will of the Greek
people as expressed in a referendum seeking relief from austerity.
Instead, the Troika forced continued austerity on the supine and
helpless nation.This action contradicted the European Union’s
founding principle of solidarity and it went down badly in the streets,
heightening public skepticism about the E.U. project as a whole and
anger toward Germany as the perceived E.U. hegemon.Last summer
was also the time when Merkel was on television giving a condescending
and cold-hearted response to the plea of a German-speaking Palestinian
girl to spare her family deportation, described by a headline in The Guardian on July 16 as follows: “Angela Merkel comforts sobbing refugee but says Germany can’t help everyone.”Considering
that within two months, the Chancellor became the public champion of
receiving all self-declared Middle Eastern asylum seekers, it would be
safe to assume that the decision was taken on the basis of her seemingly
unfailing political intuition, without adequate consultation of polls,
without due consultations with her associates in the governing
coalition, not to mention other Member States of the European Union.And
this one time when emotion won out over reason in her decision-making,
Merkel turned out to be dead wrong in terms of the impact that the
refugee crisis would have on the E.U.’s cohesion. Merkel’s error was
compounded by her mulishness.A Destabilizing FloodThe
mass movement of Syrian, Iraqi, Afghan and other refugees across E.U.
borders on their way to Germany in late summer caused alarm initially in
Greece, where they landed from Turkey in their overcrowded dinghies,
and then caused alarm and desperate measures of control in the Balkan
states as the refugees progressed on their journey.Hungary was
the first, most vociferous and quickest to act to seal its borders and
reject the influx. Slovakia, Poland and the Czech Republic followed in
succession. Austria remained open so long as the transit into Germany
was effective. Meanwhile within Germany, in Bavaria, the country’s main
entry point, nerves were fraying. And neighboring E.U. countries to the
north and west looked on with trepidation.The shift from concern
to outrage over the open-door policy was triggered by the shocking
revelations of New Year’s Eve chaos in Cologne, with robbery and sexual
aggression perpetrated by a thousand or more North African and Middle
Eastern youths grabbing world media attention after attempts by the
local authorities to maintain a news blackout failed.Both within
Germany and in the neighboring states the mood began to turn against
Merkel and against those elites who stood by her. Recent polls in The
Netherlands, for example, showed that the refugee issue and its
associated issue of Islam making claims in Christian Europe were wind to
the sails of the far right, xenophobic movements. Geert Wilders and his
Freedom Party, which had been in retreat a year ago, now could possibly
win control of parliament on a platform of closing borders to refugees
and exiting the European Union.Though national elections in
Holland are not scheduled before March 2017, there will be a referendum
on ratification of the Ukraine Association Agreement with the E.U. on
April 6. This is essentially an anti-immigrant referendum, since Ukraine
is seen, with justification, as likely to send vast numbers of
“visitors” to the E.U. if the association agreement goes through and is
followed by waiver of visa requirements.Poland already is host to
over one million Ukrainians and its welcome mat has been taken indoors.
The flat refusal of Poland to participate in the distribution of
refugees that Merkel wanted to orchestrate through the E.U. central
institutions resonated in the German political class and precipitated
the nasty German-Polish confrontation now being played out in the
European Commission and the Parliament. This is one more serious crack
in E.U. consensus brought on by Germany’s egoistical policies.Within
Germany, initial polls right after New Year’s showed a persistence of
the humanitarian spirit and a slight uptick (2 percentage points) in
Merkel’s approval rating. But as the significance of the debacle before
the Hauptbahnhof in Cologne and television reports of
molestation of good German girls in parks by frisky Arabs circulated on
television and in social media, popular support for the Chancellor’s
policies began to melt away.The media conformism came unstuck. We
have seen in the past week how rejection of anti-asylum-seekers comes
not only from the far right, among the Alternativ fùr Deutschland (AfD) and Pegida parties, but also from the left. Indeed, the FAZ was quick to note the anti-refugee position recently taken by the standard-bearer of Die Linke in the Bundestag, Sahra Wagenknecht.The
loosening of minds and tongues in Germany by the vision of refugee
waves on their shores will soon be measurable not only by public opinion
polls but by the legislative elections in three of Germany’s Länder in mid-March: Rhineland Westphalia, Baden Wurtemberg and Saxony.The German newspapers speak of an erosion of Merkel’s popular support. The latest poll conducted for Bild
confirms a 2.5 percentage-point loss for the CDU-CSU in the last week,
with a rating of 32.5 percent. Meanwhile the SPD (22.5 percent), AfD
(12.5 percent) and Free Democrats (FDP – 6.5 percent) are rising. I
submit that the true “window of opportunity” for Merkel is to stem the
flow of refugees or to appear to do that before the voters go to the
ballot box.All indications are that Merkel is counting on a deal
with the Turks to pull her chestnuts out of the fire. That is the logic
of her meeting on Friday with the Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet
Davutoglu. And yet, it is totally unrealistic to expect to see a
tangible cut-off of the refugee flows now when the Turks were unable to
deliver on similar promises made several months ago.Ultimatums
issued by German politicians both within and outside Merkel’s party
speaking of mid-March as the deadline for results are nothing more than a
fig leaf for calls for her ouster.While it is true that Merkel
has cleared the field of worthy successors within her party, it must be
recalled that the CDU-CSU are governing in a coalition with the
Socialists (SPD). If there is a serious setback for the CDU, if there is
a marked advance of the non-coalition parties in mid-March, we may
expect a sauve qui peut – or run away if you can – psychology
to set in among all the political actors, in which case regime change in
Berlin becomes a distinct possibility.

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9 comments for “Merkel’s Power Shaken by Refugee Crisis”

James lake

January 21, 2016 at 11:40 pm

merkels actions are hard to understand. I am in the UK; most people think she has gone crazy.
Purely as savvy politician any type of support for immigration( these
people are not refugees but migrants choosing to go to germany) is not a
vote winner; especially when you are pushing austerity policies on the
EU, it is not designed to be popular action. why on earth did she create this mess then double down on it.

While
on the surface it may seem that the refugee crisis has taken Western
leaders by surprise, in fact it is all part of their plan for global
domination, which was outlined in a paper by the now-defunct group of US
neoconservatives known as The Project for a New American Century
(PNAC).In September 2000, the group released a document entitled:
‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses – Strategy, Forces and Resources for a
New Century,’ in which the power-crazed individuals came out and
admitted their goal of asserting US military power around the globe in
order to remain the world’s supreme superpower.The PNAC
identified five nations it deems as “deeply hostile to America” – North
Korea, Iraq, Iran, Libya and Syria (former US General Wesley Clark added
another three to that list a bit later: Lebanon, Somalia and Sudan). It
should come as no surprise that two of these five countries have
already suffered a US-led occupation/capitulation, while Syria is still
managing to survive, albeit only due to the military intervention of
Russia.Moscow seems to have come to the correct conclusion that
Islamic State is simply a proxy army created by the United States to
smash down the doors of sovereign states.Judging by the scope of
these diabolical plans, it is altogether impossible that the United
States could not see well in advance that a flood of desperate refugees
would soon be streaming towards the European Union in search of safety.But
again, this is part of the overall plan that the US elite desire,
otherwise they would not be so aggressively pushing for the rights of
the illegal aliens over the rights of their natural born citizens.This
makes sense when we consider the absolute wreck that the Western elite
have made of the European economy, with nations like Greece, Italy,
Portugal and others on the brink of total insolvency, and only surviving
due to impossible-to-return loans pushed on them by the IMF and World
Bank.US Elites Are Trying to Destroy Europe with Immigrants By Robert Bridgehttp://russia-insider.com/en/politics/us-elites-are-trying-destroy-europe-immigrants/ri11942

US Elites Are Trying to Destroy Europe with Immigrants . . . especially Germany.Not
only `US Elites` – whatever the core definition – one does not look
too far to find that very subject being pushed by `Prominent British
Jews Advocate Increases in Refugees`.It`s obviously NO
coincidence `that the most important Jewish organization and the largest
Jewish newspaper pushing for even higher levels of immigration `,
however,has been but a devised plan by those very Jewish organization in
the works for years.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riQh4Qpvxm4

Max
Blumenthal, journalist and author of Goliath: Life and Loathing in
Greater Israel (2013) and The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza
(2015) on the political sensibilities of politician Gregor Gysi, key
figure of the The Left (Die Linke) party in Germany:During an
address before the Rosa Luxemburg Institute on the occasion of Israel’s
60th birthday in 2008, Gysi made his most public bid for mainstream
respectability. Proclaiming that anti-imperialism could no longer “be
placed in a meaningful way” within leftist discourse, Gysi railed
against expressions of Palestine solidarity within his party.
“Anti-Zionism can no longer be an acceptable position for the left in
general, and the Die Linke party in particular,” he declared. He went on
to describe “solidarity with Israel” as an essential component of
Germany’s “reason of state.”Following a stem-winding survey of
the Zionist movement’s history and its criticism from within the left,
Gysi concluded, “If we choose a position of enlightened Jewish
anti-Zionism…we still have the problem of ignoring the worst experiences
of the 20th century, which expose enlightened Jewish anti-Zionism as a
total illusion.”The Die Linke leader’s speech echoed an address
delivered in Israel’s Knesset just a few months prior by Chancellor
Angela Merkel in which she declared that preserving “Israel’s
security…is part of my country’s raison d’être.”In a sardonic
assessment of Gysi’s foreign policy pivot, left-wing columnist Werner
Pirker wrote, “Gysi admires the Israeli democracy not in spite of, but
because of its exclusiveness… With his anniversary speech for Israel
Gregor Gysi passed his foreign policy test.”In June 2011, Gysi
imposed a de facto gag rule on his party’s left wing called the “Three
Point Catalog.” It read as follows: “We will neither take part in
[political] initiatives on the Middle East which (1) call for a
one-state-solution for Palestine and Israel, nor (2) call for boycotts
against Israeli products, nor (3) will we take part in this year’s
‘Gaza-flotilla’. We expect from our personal employees and our fraction
employees that they champion these positions.”A month later, Die
Linke’s executive board voted for the first time to recognize Israel’s
“right to exist.” Among those who took credit for the vote, and for
sustaining pressure on Gysi, was a recently formed pro-Israel
organization called BAK Shalom.The Anti-GermansBAK Shalom
drew its membership from adherents of the bizarre movement known as “die
antideutsch Linke”—in short, the Anti-Germans. Born after reunification
against the phantom threat of a second Holocaust and in supposed
opposition to German nationalism, the Anti-German movement aimed to
infiltrate leftist anti-fascist circles in order to promote unwavering
support for the Israeli government and undermine traditional networks of
leftist organizing. BAK Shalom’s manifesto pledges “solidarity with
defense measures of any kind” against the Palestinians and backs
American foreign policy on the basis of purely reactionary impulses: The
US is Israel’s most aggressive patron and the ultimate target of
Israel’s enemies, therefore opponents of “anti-Semitism” must lend it
their total support.http://www.alternet.org/world/why-i-was-censored-talking-about-israel-germany

Turkey,
a US and British ally, a NATO member since the 1950s, and allegedly a
partner in the West’s “War on Terror,” was aiding and abetting, and in
fact, serving as the primary source of ISIS’ fighting capacity while
simultaneously feigning to fight the terrorist organization. […]If Turkey Created and Still Perpetuates ISIS, Why the Bombing?It
is perhaps this need to portray Turkey at war with ISIS that leads us
back to the deadly attack in Istanbul and other recent bombings like it
attributed to “ISIS.” If ISIS appears to be carrying out terrorist
attacks in Turkey – Ankara, Washington, and Wall Street reason – few
will suspect Turkey is in fact one of the primary state-sponsors
perpetuating ISIS’ continued existence in Syria.If anyone
questions Turkey’s willingness to self-inflict egregious terrorist
attacks upon its own people within its own borders, one needs only study
NATO’s extensive, decades-long operation of its various stay behind
networks – including Turkey’s “Grey Wolves” terrorist organization that
killed thousands in political violence and terrorism both within
Turkey’s borders and well beyond them.To this day, the Grey
Wolves remain engaged in violence, having attacked very publicly the
Thai consulate in Istanbul, and having been linked to both terrorism in
China’s Xinjiang region as well as having been implicated in a 2015
blast that rocked Bangkok and killed 20 people.Considering the
hundreds of supply trucks a day departing Turkey, bound for ISIS’
defacto capital in Raqqa, and fleets of tankers filled with looted
Syrian oil entering back into Turkey forming the cornerstone of ISIS’
logistical and financial networks, it is clear that if Raqqa is the
heart of ISIS, Turkey’s role in running ISIS logistics serves as the
arteries feeding that heart with the blood it needs to continue beating.If
Turkey is blaming ISIS for the recent attack in Istanbul, then it is
clear that it is in turn implicating itself. When asking why it would do
that, the simplest answer stands to reason – because if people believe
ISIS is attacking Turkey, they are less likely to believe Turkey is in
fact backing ISIS. And as long as this charade can continue
convincingly, that backing can continue until the goal of destroying
Syria is achieved.Turkey: Bombing Its Way to a Better Narrative By Tony Cartaluccihttp://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2016/01/turkey-bombing-its-way-to-better.html

Why
Germany has to pay for Zionist depredations,and its leader a stupid
clod who lets her country be divided and conquered like America,is
beyond comprehension. Schroeder was much better,an independent German who knew Iraq was the harbinger of European decline and collapse.

Hard times for Merkel: Pressure builds over refugees

In the past six months, "We can do it" has been Angela Merkel's mantra
on the refugee crisis. She will not budge from that standpoint, no
matter how much pressure is mounting on her.

She has been chancellor for over 10 years and head of her party, the
Christian Democratic Union (CDU), for over 15. She has seen government
leaders throughout the world come and go. In May 2015, "Forbes" magazine
named her most powerful woman in the world for the fifth consecutive
year. She did indeed lead Europe in the EU's financial crisis and in the
ensuing European debt gamble; there was no way of avoiding the German
chancellor back then. And now?
Angela Merkel is now troubled, domestically and on a European level. How
did things end up this way? Did the Chancellor misjudge the situation?
"Europe as whole must take action; the states must take on
responsibility for refugees seeking asylum," she demands, as she always
has in the past. Yet the majority of EU states refuse to do so, despite
the appeals. An attempt to share the burden has obviously failed and,
with it, Angela Merkel's political plan.
Sweden, Austria and Germany were the states that have, until recently, taken in the greatest number of
refugees
. However, the Scandinavians and Austrians used the emergency brake and
decided to restrict a further influx of people. And Germany? Merkel will
not hear of a cap for migrants. She has argued that this cannot be
achieved on a unilateral level and has also thought about the
consequences: Must German tanks patrol the border and even shoot people
who refuse to be sent away?
Merkel has always been successful with her objective and low-key
approach to problems and the way she extensively analyzes them in order
to find logical and transparent solutions. People say the physicist has
no room for emotions. Yet, last summer, when a growing number of Germans
got involved in refugee support measures and a "welcome culture" until
then unseen in the country was spreading, it seemed that the chancellor
had infected the people with her enthusiasm. "Germany is a strong
country," she said. "We can do it."September 5 and beyond
The chancellor would lose credibility were she to change her mind about
that decision. At the same time, Merkel was aware early on that the
arrival of large numbers of refugees could not be compared to any
political challenge in recent times; it was a historical turning point.
According to estimates, last summer 800,000 refugees were expected to
arrive in Germany. "We stand before a huge national challenge that will
be a central challenge - not only for days or months, but for a long
period of time," she said.
Did the Chancellor already know that in five days, she would do what critics still rebuke her for?
Praise poured in for the German government, and especially Merkel,
through social networks. She was immediately idolized and called "Mother
of all believers" because she had "invited" Syrians to Germany and
welcomed them with open arms. And, indeed, the next day many Germans
were waiting to warmly welcome the refugees in places like Munich's
central train station. Images of the volunteers quickly spread around
the world but the Bavarian State Premier Horst Seehofer was grumbling
that Merkel had made a mistake.
That marked the beginning of a political conflict that has made Merkel
look much weaker than she would were her own party to stand behind her
united. Seehofer's Christian Social Union is the Bavarian sibling of
Merkel's CDU, and the two parties work together on a national level. The
CSU's open disapproval upset Merkel, and she responded by saying that
"if we now have to start apologizing for showing a friendly face in
response to emergency situations, then that's not my country."
Ever since then, the two camps have become entrenched in their positions
and no one has budged. The CSU, however, still has the strength to
continue criticizing Merkel's refugee policies. The only difference now,
compared to in autumn, is that the CSU has developed concrete
proposals, such as not allowing more than 200,000 refugees to enter the
country. Merkel's own party has also found advocates of such a cap.
But Merkel perseveres. At the CSU congress on January 20, the party
expressed its disappointment over her lack of compliance. The CSU is now
threatening to bring proceedings before Germany's Constitutional Court
to allow border patrols. Merkel has until March to change her position.
If she does not act, the CSU could, as a consequence, terminate the
coalition with the CDU and then exit the government. Then, Merkel would
no longer be chancellor.
Is Angela Merkel left with only with a choice between power and loss of
face? Or will there be a European solution? Right now, no one has
answers to these questions.

About Me

Betty MacDonald Fan Club, founded by Wolfgang Hampel, has members in 40 countries.
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